Leo’s apparent lack of knowledge. ‘This business with Abbie reminds us of what happened to your friend - Fiona. She was a pretty little thing when she was at school, but then it happened, and she just upped and left without a word.’
‘Families do that sometimes,’ Leo answered.
‘Ah - well that’s the thing, you see. It was only Fiona that left. Her family didn’t go. They stayed - her parents and her brother - but they wouldn’t say a single thing about it.’
Leo shook her head. Now she knew what Fiona meant about a cloud of suspicion.
‘I only remember Fiona vaguely from then, I’m afraid. I do know that she left, but I’m sure there was nothing strange about it.’
Mrs Talbot seemed indignant, but Leo had had enough. She knew what villages were like for gossip, but there was a kind of salacious pleasure in it sometimes that Leo hated. She turned back to the shelves, grabbed a bottle of red wine pretty much at random and fished out her purse to pay.
‘Well, it was strange,’ Mrs Talbot continued. ‘Mind you, it must be fifteen years or more since it happened, but she was pregnant for sure. Nobody knew who the father was. Maybe she was abducted and escaped too. She’s never said a word about it since she’s been back. And now that snooty husband of hers has been arrested.’
Thinking that “arrested” was a massive exaggeration of the facts, Leo finished paying for her purchases, smiled her thanks to the shopkeeper, and turned to Mrs Talbot with her best effort at a friendly smile.
‘I sincerely doubt that it’s anything at all sinister. I’m sorry Doreen, but I’ve got to rush.’
Leo said her goodbyes and made her way out of the door, leaving a floundering Mrs Talbot in her wake.
It appeared that there was more to Fiona’s story than she had realised, and she would dearly love to know Charles’ part in all this. But there was no way that she was doing an information swap with Doreen Talbot. She’d have to ask Ellie to fill in some blanks.
Clearly something had happened to Fiona all those years ago, but it couldn’t possibly have any relevance to what had happened to Abbie.
* * *
The spicy aromas in the kitchen were drifting towards Tom, and he had to admit was looking forward to dinner. But he wouldn’t be ready to eat for hours yet. He’d decided to have an Indian cooking spree to fill his empty day; he would eat some of it tonight, and stuff the rest in the freezer.
Making his way from the kitchen into the adjoining living room, he picked up the book he’d been reading. Or trying to read. He had thought a detective novel would be perfect, but he got irritated by the inaccuracies and the obsession with painting all fictional policeman as anything from slightly unbalanced to seriously disturbed. His thoughts kept leaping back to the news that Abbie Campbell had been abducted. He was missing his job far more than he had ever imagined, and was struggling to stop himself from interfering in this investigation. As it was, he made several trips a day to the village shops, just to see what information he could pick up. The answer was - not much. Of course, everybody knew that he was a policeman, and perhaps they guarded their tongues when he was around.
There was one bit of good news, though. He’d heard from Greater Manchester Police that morning, and there was definitely going to be a vacancy in the Serious Crime Division. It was the same rank - chief inspector - but he was happy with that. He didn’t want to become desk bound, and he hated anything to do with force politics. He was more than a little interested in the job, and was going in next week for a chat. He would be reporting to a woman who had once been one of his team, but she’d had a meteoric rise to power since he left and in his view her promotion was perfectly justified. He’d probably get the piss taken out of him for a while, but he could live with that.
He glanced out of the window and was surprised, but pleased, to see Leo walking up the path with a carrier bag that looked suspiciously as if it contained bottles. She was dressed in her customary black and white, but this time she was wearing white linen trousers that clung to her